Desert Southwest gardening can be sustainable, smart and spectacular.

Tag Archives: low-water landscaping

A month ago, I talked about how strategic use of rocks and other natural hardscaping could add interest to your xeric garden. Another strategy, and a fun activity, is careful placement of art in the xeric garden.

This sundial, a gift from family, has a prominent spot in our rock garden.

With small objects of art, you can treat your garden like a canvas to add focal points of interest for times when plants are not blooming, to bring the eye up or down as a complement to plant height, to add pops of color or movement, or just to add some fun and whimsy.

The snail is an offering, but hasn’t convinced the real crawlers to move on! The wind spinner adds movement, sometimes lots of it!

Although many of the objects in our garden have been gifts from family members, we also have enjoyed picking up a few pieces of art when traveling. That way, we have a souvenir from our trip, and we get to see it nearly every day in one of our favorite places.

Of course, there is some magnificent art you can purchase, such as fountains carved from natural stone. And you will see excellent specimens in your favorite home design and fine gardening magazines. If you have a tighter budget and like to collect your own small objects, it’s really a matter of personal taste when deciding what goes into your garden. And although I am not a landscape designer, here are a few tips:

For xeric gardens, art made from natural materials typically fits in better. Objects made from metal, wood or stone and with earthy finishes usually fit into the flow better. However, a few bursts of color can really add to the garden’s palette. For example, there is a piece of garden sculpture at one of our favorite shops in nearby Cloudcroft, N.M., called Off the Beaten Path, that I’m coveting. It’s an army helmet made into a bright red ladybug. And one of these days, it will have a place of honor among the green of our garden. Unless they sell them all before I can get one!

These birdhouses, both gifts painted by family members, add pops of color around our redbud that we can see from a distance.

With color or garden art in general, too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. In other words, I have seen it overdone. Still, if you get joy from collecting or making garden art, then go for it. After all, this is your garden, your sanctuary.

When placing art, consider plants’ growth. If you have a large object that you can’t easily move, be sure not to place it so close to a small shrub that the art eventually disappears. I’ve pulled up plenty of annuals and weeds because they choked out a favorite little sculpture.

Our little stone and metal ant is being overrun by annuals that popped up around him. I need to move him or clean up so he can be seen.

We won’t burn anything in this mini-chiminea, but I do want to try growing a shade-loving plant in it.

Really, the sky’s the limit, especially if you are into repurposing old items. A larger garden can hold a recycled gate or window with your own idea for a stained glass design added by a local artist, or you can create a small bottle tree.

With strategically placed garden art, you can add year-round interest to your xeric garden without the need to add more or larger plantings.

If one of your concerns about xeriscaping is that your garden will look as barren as the Southwest desert, it only takes a little planning and time to ensure you have some color and texture from spring to fall. Of course, that’s easy if you have unlimited water and time.

I can’t resist the urge to showcase New Mexico sites and landscapes, even when discussing barren deserts. This is a hilltop outside Alamogordo, N.M., with a view of the White Sands in the distance.

But it’s also entirely possible and relatively simple to have continuous color using low-water plants. Here are a few suggestions:

Don’t give up on bulbs. Although you would think they use lots of water, they’re like the camels of the plant world, adapted or bred to store water and energy in their roots, stems or leaves. They also do best in well-draining soil. I’m lumping corms, tubers and rhizomes with true bulbs. Spring-flowering bulbs should need no water other than rain after established unless you have a really long dry spell, especially during growth and flowering. As long as you choose varieties recommended for your area and follow care guides for placement, mulching and dividing, you should be able to add bulbs to your xeric garden as desired. I love how iris and tulips bloom early as a sign of spring.

Iris provide spring color with little to no extra water or work.

Day lily blooms only last one day, but bloom in early summer. We found out they bloom closer to July 1 in our slightly cooler zone.

Choose one or two continuous, or nearly continuous, bloomers. I don’t know how a small shrub, especially a xeric one, can bloom in the late spring or early summer and hold those blooms all season. But I think the easiest way to plan a small xeric garden is to select one continuous bloomer you like, then build around it. For example, santolina usually blooms all summer, after one trim or shearing back in the spring. Since it has yellow flowers, you can then decide how you’d like to complement the low spreading shrub with other colors throughout the summer. By the way, it’s also evergreen, so you can consider how to complement the gray (silvery foliage) or green santolina with another evergreen or some hardscaping for winter interest. Other examples, depending on your zone, are gaura (Gaura linheimeri) or most salvias, though some might require deadheading.

Try a groundcover. You don’t have to replace your entire lawn with a groundcover, but you can add color with some well-placed xeric planting. Several thyme varieties require no water at all and are terrific at filling in spaces between pavers, rocks or stepping stones. You’ll get some green and tiny purple flowers when they bloom. A groundcover also can cool the roots of other plants that need a little help to survive hot summer days. Just remember that they spread, especially if you overwater them.

This groundcover is spreading in several areas this summer and sending up stalks with tiny lavender-colored flowers. I think it is a speedwell.

Supplement with a few annual seeds or containers. Satisfy your desire for early color and bloom variety each year with some annuals. Seeds are inexpensive, but are a little more water and time intensive. Or fill a designated area of your patio, deck or garden with a few containers with pops of color from annual bedding plants. You can decide when the color appears and what colors you want to complement your perennial blooms. Seeds sowed as soon as the ground warms will bloom later than many of your perennials. And many annuals continue blooming with or without pinching and deadheading. I love petunias in containers because they spread with little effort on my part and need no deadheading, just pinching off of spent buds every now and then to look their best.

Petunias are so simple in beds or containers. They spread with little water or attention.

It can be a lot of work to deadhead continuously. So it’s probably good to limit the number of annuals that need regular trimming of blooms to force new ones. But some xeric plants such as lavender and salvias will bloom a second time with one trim following the first bloom, so you get a late, bonus wave of color.

Some plants give you plenty of hints (Autumn sedum booms in fall!). But if you have limited space and experience, a xeric landscape designer can help you select the fewest plants possible for continuous bloom.

Roses are old-fashioned favorites that often remind gardeners of their mothers or grandmothers or of lush gardens in the South, where both water and sun were readily available from nature. But I see fewer roses in gardens now, partly because they’re associated with lots of patience and care, and partly because some of the hybrid roses need more water than a low-water garden can – and should – provide. It’s also strange to picture a tall, hybrid tea rose in the middle of a xeric landscape, although a good landscape designer can always work a small rose garden into your plan if that’s what you desire.

Friends brought us this floribunda as a housewarming gift and it fits nicely in our xeric rose garden. We watered it the first year, but only a little this spring.

Many shrub-size roses fit in nicely with the look and purpose of a low-water garden. So you can have the scent and many other features of roses, as long as you’re willing to choose the right type of rose. Here are a few to consider:

Species roses. A species rose is basically a wild rose. Several species roses have grown to adapt to drought and other extreme conditions. I have several in my rose garden area, and I know one of them is a Wood’s rose (Rosa Woodsii). It can grow to at least 10 feet and has beautiful pink flowers, followed by hips all fall and winter, which the birds love. Another is a shorter, shrub-style rose that I believe is the Prairie rose (Rosa blanda), with pink flowers that fade to white in the center. The other has deep red flowers. Both have in common large, plentiful thorns and bunches of two-inch flowers in late spring.

Close-up of a Wood’s rose bloom. They’re small, but abundant on the plant’s long canes.

The wild Rosa blanda is only about 18 inches tall.

Native roses. In New Mexico and other Southwestern states, the Arizona Rosewood (Vauquelina californica), which resembles an evergreen oleander in its foliage and shape, or the Apache Plume (Fallugia paradoxica) both have delicate white flowers that resemble roses. The native plants have adapted to the Southwest and attract bees.

This Apache plume (with the Wood’s rose in left background) got too dense and full. They are so easy to care for and forgiving when pruned.

Shrubs and groundcovers. Some hybrid roses have been adapted to grow as smaller shrubs and groundcovers. They’ll use less water and take up less space in the landscape. In general, they need less care than other rose types, but have long bloom periods.

Flower Carpet Red from Tesselaar is a spreading groundcover rose that reaches no more than 32 inches high. It’s drought tolerant once established and hardy down to zone 5. Image courtesy of Tesselaar.

In fact, species, native and certain shrub or groundcover roses are all typically easier to care for and relatively disease free. Just give them mostly sun and prune according to recommendations once in early spring. You don’t have to continuously dead-head blooms, and they have adapted to lower water and the changing conditions of high deserts and mountains, so having them in your garden is more water wise. But there are a few disadvantages. The species roses are wild, which means they can sprout new canes or offshoots. The yellow one in our garden has gotten too thick and large, and will need serious pruning next spring; it’s sort of taken over the area and is shading some other plants too much.

Our rosa blanda, red species rose and taller yellow species rose to the right. It blooms earlier than the others, so we have color from early May through September.

Another disadvantage is that if you love to cut long rose stems to use the blooms in flower arrangements, you won’t enjoy these varieties as much as hybrid tea roses; their stems are typically shorter. However, if you want to walk or sit next to them in your garden and stop to smell them, or simply enjoy the beauty of the plant and blooms, you can have your roses and save water too!

Across the nation and world, efforts are underway to save native seeds. For a number of reasons, seed banks or vaults have cropped up around the globe, some located underground, to store a variety of crop seeds. Some banks store seeds in the event of an apocalyptic event, even a natural one, that wipes out vegetation. Other reasons are simply to preserve the biodiversity of crops so they can continue to adapt to changing climate and conditions and to maintain the integrity of ancient, heirloom varieties during an age of hybridization and genetic modification.

There are more than 1,000 seed banks around the world, some private and some public. The U.S. government operates one in Fort Collins, Colo. In this and most seed storage facilities, the seeds are kept in cold storage, where they can survive for decades.

Seeds in cold storage room at Native Seeds/SEARCH in Tucson.

In various seed banks are hundreds of thousands of plant species, some of which already face endangered status. Plants’ adaptation to various climates and conditions is important. For example, native plants I mention in my posts that have adapted to low water or drought probably wouldn’t survive in a tropical rainforest. On the other hand, only plants adapted to xeric conditions thrive during drought.

A few years ago, I had the privilege of visiting the Native Seeds/SEARCH seed conservation site in Tucson, Ariz. The program was started in 1983 as a way to help improve food security for the Tohono O’odham Nation, and has grown into an outstanding program that is helping conserve the biodiversity of arid native Southwestern crops.

Ancient Native American corn grown in demonstration area at Native Seeds/SEARCH.

I got to see inside a preservation area, hear about the program and see evidence of some of the rare or endangered plants that Native Seeds has helped preserve. This past week, Native Seeds announced an initiative that allows supporters to “Adopt a Crop,” which helps pay to get seeds planted back in the ground. The program operates a conservation farm in Patagonia, Ariz., near the Arizona/Mexico border and sells many of the native seeds from their Tucson site and online. Many seed banks also provide education programs on how gardeners and farmers can harvest and preserve their own seeds.

Although it’s a member of the zinnia family, the desert zinnia (Zinnia grandiflora) is remarkably different from the large annual flower we typically think of when we hear of a zinnia. Actually a member of the aster (Asteracaea) family, this tiny perennial is a delicate xeric groundcover or low shrub native to New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.

The desert zinnia has a big flower on needle-like leaves. I love how the flower sort of reflects the sun it loves.

Also called prairie zinnia or Rocky Mountain zinnia, the plant blooms in summer and its tiny, needle-like foliage dies back in the frost of winter, resembling dormant grass. But have no fear! The plant is there, and comes back, even spreading. I just brush up the dormant leaves as part of the spring garden clean-up, and new plants already are appearing underneath. You could also gently rake up the spent foliage in larger areas. Clearing off the old leaves exposes the new plants to more sun, which they love.

This tiny desert zinnia is casting a morning shadow on the rock it grows from.

But although desert zinnia loves sun, it doesn’t love water. That’s right – once established, desert zinnia needs no water at all. Too much water just introduces weeds into the mix, which can be hard to pull from between the delicate foliage. If you have a period of no rain, you can give desert zinnia some water to ensure blooming. The flowers also do fine in partial shade.

Desert zinnia will spread low across the ground or cascade down rocks. This weekend starts monsoon season, and I expect more blooms to appear.

Typically, the desert zinnia is about 4 inches high and spreads to nearly 15 inches wide. Each flower can reach nearly an inch in diameter, with an orange cone (Golden Eye) surrounded by three to six yellow petals. It should thrive in zones 5 through 8. It’s a great plant for erosion control and for rock gardens. I love how it cascades over and through our rock wall.

In 2012, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) updated its cold hardiness zones. Farmers, suppliers and home gardeners use the zone designations to help standardize how well a plant can survive at average extreme minimum temperatures. In the new iteration, the USDA added two new warm zones to reflect areas in which the average low stays above 50 degrees (if only!). Of course, the zones are restricted to tropical areas of the country, such as Hawaii. Several zone boundaries also shifted to reflect warmer temperatures in several zones from the 30 years of data collection.

If only I lived in Maui, where the zones are more like 10 to 13 and the landscape is so lush.

Read what you want from the shifts in zones, though the USDA is quick to point out that climate change trends require 50 to 100 years of data collection, and zone changes are not reliable evidence of whether there is global warming.

At any rate, if you haven’t checked your USDA zone in a few years, it’s a good idea to look again and see if it’s shifted. The USDA has given you another reason to check. The scale has fine resolution and GIS technology. This means that between your ZIP code and GIS location, you can have more accurate data to reflect the effects of, say, urban streets and buildings on your townhouse patio. It’s huge for someone like me who lives in a rural area and seldom receives accurate weather data, for instance, unless I collect it in my own back yard. The map recognized my location and pinpointed my zone accordingly as 6B.

Here’s a simplified image of the USDA hardiness zones. Visit the USDA site (by clicking on the image) for more detail on your zone.

Cold hardiness is not the only factor to consider, though, especially for xeriscaping. Altitude affects temperature, but also contributes to drying of plants. And wind, well, don’t get me started. I will say that wind dries a plant out and does plenty of damage to new plantings or houseplants you’re beginning to bring outdoors. You also have to consider soil and microclimates, such as those on the city balcony. On a broader scale, valley or riverbank climates differ from those of mountains or open plains.

Within your xeric garden, you can push a zone slightly by adding plenty of warmth to a plant when you place light-colored gravel under it or plant it near a south-facing wall. Or help out a plant that needs a zone cooler by putting it under the shade of a tree or on the north side of your home. Just be sure to check tags for plant hardiness zone before buying, especially from catalogs, online or in big-box stores.

South-facing rocks keep this Ephedra in the foreground and transplanted cinquefoil (Potentilla fruitcosa) nice and warm.

A well-planned xeric landscape can include a few low- or medium-water shade trees, especially when the trees are native to the area. Trees naturally use more water than small shrubs, but offer several advantages that make up for it, including:

Providing shade for houses and patios to cut energy use in summer. Choosing a deciduous (instead of an evergreen) tree means you’ll only shade windows in summer, and leave them open to sun in the winter to provide solar gain for warming your home. Trees that drop leaves in winter work best at shading your house when planted on the home’s southwest corner.

Nothing beats a shade tree in summer for plants and gardeners. This established Chinese apricot on the southwest corner or our home shades the patio, garden and some rooms and windows. We hope it provides fruit soon.

Trees also can shade other plants, helping to keep roots cool and moist, which saves some water in the landscape and opens up your ornamental or edible plant choices.

Place shade trees close enough to your house that you’ll receive some of the energy savings and comfort of the shade, keeping in mind the tree’s mature size and the direction of summer sun and shade.

Here are a few low-to-medium trees that can provide shade and interest to a xeric landscape:

Desert willow (Chilopsis linearis) is a striking, rainwater-only tree once established. Its shrubby, slightly smaller shape might be less effective at shading large areas or for providing cover for a picnic table, but it grows quickly the first few years. In fact, if you overwater it, the trunks grow too quickly and are susceptible to breakage from the wind. The orchid-like flowers attract hummingbirds. The sun lover may leaf out after other trees in spring, so don’t worry. It can reach heights of 20 feet and grows in zones 7 through 9.

The desert willow has delicate leaves and orchid-like flowers. It will leave seed pods, but I’ve never found them to be messy.

Catalpa (Catalpa speciosa) has large, oval leaves and showy, almost tubular flowers. The tree can take heat and low to medium water. It grows to a height of about 60 feet in zones 4 through 8. Just beware of the Chitalpa (X Chitalpa taskentensis), a hybrid cross of the catalpa and the desert willow. Its flowers are gorgeous and it’s fuller than the desert willow, but the plant is prone to a bacterial disease.

Close-up of catalpa leaves and flowers. Image by G. F. Russell and courtesy of the Smithsonian Plant Image Collection.

Velvet mesquite (Prosopis velutina) is a low-water shade tree that also leafs out late in spring, and rewards with sweet-smelling yellow flowers. It can reach 30 feet tall and 25 feet wide and is more cold hardy than some low-water choices, down to 5 degrees Fahrenheit. All of the mesquites are low-water users, surviving in the driest conditions.

Smoke tree (Cotinus coggyria) can take low-water conditions once established, but might require more water during hot summer months and while flowering. The flowers give the smoke tree its name; they’re feathery seedheads that burst open in summer. The foliage is just as attractive, though, with both green and purple colors, and a fall gold. The tree will only reach about 15 feet high, but it’s a great choice for xeric landscapes.

Large smoke tree in full bloom at the Hondo Iris Farm in New Mexico.

Smoke tree leaves and bloom. The leaves change color throughout the year and the blooms do have a smoky scent.

Blue spruce (Picea pungens). Most evergreens, except Junipers, require at least medium water. I can’t bring myself to recommend Junipers because of their allergenic potential. But you’re welcome to read about junipers elsewhere. The blue spruce is meant for cooler climates (Zones 3 through 6) and can grow to 50 feet. It comes in smaller cultivars that can survive at lower elevations and work better in a small yard or xeric landscape without taking over.

The regal-looking blue spruce, an evergreen choice for cooler climates. Image from North Dakota Extension Service and USDA Plant Database.

For an edible choice, try the Jujube (Zizyphus jujuba). Once established, it only needs a deep watering once a month. The tree also is called the Chinese date because it bears a sweet/sour date-like fruit for birds or people. The tree tends to spread and form groves, so it’s great for shade and wind screens. It can reach a height of 20 or 30 feet, however.

The number of honey bees and other pollinating insects is declining around the United States. Colony collapse disorder and other diseases, along with increased pesticide, use are likely culprits. What’s more, monarch butterfly populations have been declining by the millions!

We were stuck with ivy around all of our walls at our last home. We pulled out any that was rooted on our side of the fence. It’s not xeric and it is invasive, but butterflies flocked to the blooms.

On May 19, President Obama announced steps aimed at improving the health of pollinating insects. And in response, the National Pollinator Garden Network issued the Million Pollinator Garden Challenge. According to the network, pollinators help generate one out of three bites of food we eat each year. Planting plenty of trees and flowers that attract bees, butterflies, birds and bats can help improve pollinator health and populations.

The challenge calls on homeowners, businesses and communities to create and sustain gardens that attract pollinators. Let me just say that this is another concern I have about extreme xeriscaping, or a trend I see of replacing every bit of plant and lawn in a landscape with gravel. New Mexico, for one, is barren enough. And there are plenty of xeric plants that attract birds, bees and other insects and provide some color in the landscape.

And here are a few tips for meeting the challenge, or at least for making sure you have plenty of bees, butterflies and other pollinators in your garden:

Of course, including native, low-water plants is critical. Look for symbols in product catalogs or lists of xeric pollinators. And remember bees love herbs too. They buzz all around our thyme when it flowers, and there are roses and other flowering ornamentals pollinators love that need nothing but rainwater once established.

This woods rose had bees all over it the other morning. It’s a native, wild rose that’s xeric.

Some people avoid plants that attract bees because of possible stings, especially with children around. I have a few plants that attract seemingly hundreds, and one we walk past constantly. But if bees bother you, just place your pollinator plants where you can see them, but in a spot you seldom sit or walk by, and not where the kids’ soccer ball always ends up when they play in the back yard.

Providing water can be tough. Our birdbath dries up in a day or two, and I hate to refill it, knowing it will evaporate. But I can use rain water. The birds also gather on the top of our rain barrels, where the water sometimes pools. Butterflies need only a few drops in a tiny rock or plate.

Some native plants bloom continuously with no effort on your part. Look for those! An example is catmint (Nepeta). And create a dense grouping with a mix of colors and bloom times to attract pollinators, especially if you have limited space. A few annuals can provide blooms when perennials fade. We have cosmos that pop up late in summer and birds balance on the thin stalks, gathering seeds.

Moonshine yarrow (Achillea millefolium) is a perfect pollinator. It blooms all season and has a flat surface for easy landing! Bees also love the annual blanket flower (Gallardia)

One of the great benefits of inviting pollinators with flowering plants is that they should make a side trip to your edibles. Don’t be afraid to plant some flowers near vegetables, as long as they don’t compete for sun and water or hide weeds.

If your roses or other plants get aphids, wash the tiny bugs off with a fine spray of water in the morning before turning to a pesticide; it’s just not necessary. Spray again in a few days if more return. And try to stick with pesticides on your edibles that are least harmful to honeybees, such as insecticidal soap.

Gardening books and plant tags often tell homeowners to “water the plant to a depth of xx inches.” That’s all well and good, but since I am not a gopher and don’t have x-ray vision, how do I know how deep water goes when I soak a tree or bush? And why is it important?

Overwatering is not just wasteful, but can harm plants. Take the tomato, or don’t take it if it has cracked from overwatering or inconsistent watering. Using a well can help ensure that you water your tomato the same depth each time, assuming the water flow is fairly slow and steady.

A tomato well holds water in place and helps me keep track of the amount I water each time. That’s important once the fruit starts growing.

Of course, there are plenty of calculations you can do, including soil tests. But there are easier ways to find out. For small ornamentals and container plants, just dig your finger in and check the soil. Most plants need water when the soil is dry down to a half-inch or so. Of course, the best way to know whether a plant needs water is to know the plant! Depth is not even an issue for xeric plants that rely on natural rainwater only, at least not once the plant is healthily established.

These xeric plants need no water. The nighstock and gallardia came up from volunteer seeds, and an agave, prickly pear and green santolina fill in the background.

If water pours out the bottom of a container, you probably are overwatering or adding water in too quickly or forcefully. Picture the same effect in the ground. So slow down the water to give your plant time to get acquainted! When the water pours out the bottom instead of dripping, it washes important soil nutrients out with it.

For a lawn, there are plenty of tips to help conserve water, and the best strategy is to run a short cycle, wait the length of one cycle, and run another short cycle. You’ll know if your cycle is too long if you note any standing water or runoff. Running a short cycle prevents waste, and by waiting, you give the first cycle’s water time to soak down to the turf’s roots. The second application of water can push remaining moisture a little deeper, where it will be retained.

Trees need the deepest watering of all, and Arizona’s Water Use It Wisely program has a great method for determining watering depth that we used last year when we planted a new Chinese pistache (Pistacia chinensis):

Water your tree as you normally would, and about an hour later, push a soil probe into the ground. Since you might not have one of these lying around, you can use a screwdriver or a piece of rebar long enough for the depth you need to measure, plus a few bonus inches to help retrieve it when you’re done.

Mark your homemade probe or rebar before pushing it into the ground, premeasured with the recommended depth (such as 12 inches or 30 inches).

If your rebar goes in easily to the recommended depth, you’ve watered long enough. If not, add some water until the soil softens.

We gently hammered a piece of rebar in the well area to check watering depth. If it goes in easily, your soil is soaked through. You can also use a soil probe.

Note how long you left your hose or drip system on and the approximate flow (slow, medium, trickle…). That way, you won’t have to keep measuring the depth, at least not for the same plant, and you’ll know about how long to water next time.

If you’re not an experienced gardener or feel overwhelmed by the prospect of starting a landscape from scratch or switching your entire landscape to a xeric one, why not start small?

Time, money and inexperience should not keep gardeners from enjoying a few plants in their yard. I sometimes can’t stop bemoaning the trend in believing that xeriscaping is the same as “zeroscaping.” Again, it’s not!

Even new, young gardeners and urban dwellers can enjoy a few blooms or edibles without busting their budgets, schedules or water resources. Try these tips:

Start with containers. If you have little space, but crave fresh herbs, enjoy a few bright blooms next to you while you savor your morning coffee outside. Or enjoy the view of hummingbirds hovering over a flower by outfitting your patio or balcony with a few brilliant containers. You could add a long, thin box with your favorite low-water kitchen herbs and a tall, round container with a salvia for color and pollinator interest. Or try a geranium, which uses a little more water, but lasts year-round in your container if you bring it indoors to a sunny location.

Mint in a container — where it belongs! Friends gave us these two transplants. That’s a baby mesclun lettuce mix to the right.

Take it one area or bed at a time. If the idea of going completely xeric in your garden is too much to handle at once, take baby steps. Convert a small area of your lawn from grass to gravel and native plants, or from high-water grass to native grass, gravel and native plantings. Or take out grass along a sidewalk or driveway and create a path with a few ornamental grasses and perennials. An easy way to conserve water is to divert rain from a downspout that pours onto, say, a driveway so that the water instead flows to a tree already in your landscape. Find plans for dry river beds with rocks to ensure the water flows to your tree.

Choose one or two hardy xeric perennials a year. I’m not the best person to advise patience, but if you’re short on budget and time, choose just a few hardy xeric plants to start your garden off right. The best choices depend on where you live and your USDA zone, along with the microclimate for the location you plan for the plant. Choose a perennial, a plant that will live through your winter and bloom again for at least two years. If this is an early attempt at gardening for you, go to a local nursery, where the staff can show you a few natives for your area that are hardy and easier to grow. Then go by size, bloom color, water and sun needs, maybe overall care (like deadheading) and your general reaction to the plant. There’s nothing wrong with choosing two of the same plant if you love it. Repetition can be just as attractive in a xeric landscape as complementing textures and colors!

This Dianthus next to our bird fountain needs little care and no supplemental watering, but comes back each year. In fact, a new plant showed up in another bed about 15 feet from this one.

Buy seeds instead of annual plants. This early in the year, at least in most zones, you still can have plenty of success with seeds for annuals to complement your perennials. There are tons of great xeric wildflower choices that grow from seeds, saving you lots of money. Instead of buying several six-packs of petunias or marigolds, pick up a seed packet of cosmos, zinnias, poppies or a native wildflower mix. Seeds need more attention and watering at first, but the flowers usually reseed for several years. And even though seeds in packet eventually expire, we’ve had success with old flower seeds.

I can see this stunning blue flax (Linum lewisii) from my office. The damp spot on the ground is an area of red flax seeds we sowed.

Of course, if you can go big, do it. There are plenty of professionals, books and sites dedicated to xeric landscaping.